


Is This to End or Just Begin

by ArtemisRae



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: All of the spoilers, Gen, Grief/Mourning, How do you even move on from this, Spoilers for Season 3, i dont even know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 00:16:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19734532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisRae/pseuds/ArtemisRae
Summary: Yours is the cloth, mine is the hand that sews timeHis is the force that lies withinOurs is the fire, all the warmth we can findHe is a feather in the wind, ohAll of my love, all of my love, ohAll of my love to you(All of My Love, Led Zeppelin)In the aftermath of Starcourt, people keep trying to get El to talk.





	Is This to End or Just Begin

**Author's Note:**

> Hahahahahahahahah here I exorcised all my bad feelings about season 3 so I could go back to giving you all bad feelings in For the Unknown.
> 
> All of the spoilers for season 3, obviously.

_I. Sam Owens_

The first person to try was Dr. Owens, in the back of an ambulance while they dressed the wound in her leg. It would need stitches later, they explained, but the blackness of the flesh indicated infection ( _they had no idea_ ) and they wanted her to take antibiotics first. She would need follow up care ( _they really had no idea_ ). 

She was alone with Dr. Owens at Mike's and then Joyce's insistence, to see if he had any thoughts on her diminished powers.

"I gotta be honest, it's been a while since I read your medical records,” he said, his jovial tone at odds with the sirens and people shouting outside of the closed doors. "But Br-the previous leadership seemed to think that your powers were like a muscle, and would grow stronger the more you exercised that muscle."

El noticed the way he avoided saying Papa's name. He really must have read her records then, if he knew better than to say that man's name to her. "They were wrong."

"Jane." Dr. Owens leaned forward and rested a hand on her wrist. She stared down at his manicured nails. "Muscles can be injured. You pull it the wrong way, or twist it, and they hurt, they lose their strength. You let them rest, and recover, and they come back twice as strong."

El blinked, and tried to process that information. Owens leaned back and sighed. "I'm not sure how to ice your brain, but I am prescribing rest. Don't push it and let it recover."

She swallowed hard, and nodded. Glancing up, she heard voices outside - Dustin, asking what was going on, and Mike, answering. Owens followed her gaze.

"You know." He cleared his throat. "I, uh, I saw Chief Hopper pretty often. I always thought all the questions he asked when I saw Will were all because of him, but in hindsight, he was always worried about you, and worried about keeping you safe."

Her throat closed up, stealing her breath, but Owens kept talking. "It looks like you have a pretty strong support system out there, so make sure you lean on them. For your own safety. Not just physically." He tapped the knee on her bad leg when he said this, and then lapsed into silence.

She was aware that she was still learning what Hopper would call social cues, but she did understand that Owens seemed to think they were having a conversation, and was waiting for her to respond. She had nothing to say though, and Owens sighed and stood, hunching slightly in the ambulance, and reached for the door. "I'm sorry for your loss kid."

The fact that he called her kid made the ache in her throat ten times worse. She held her breath, waiting for the worst to pass, but it never did. When she finally looked up, her face was wet, and Owens was replaced by Mike. The look on his face was so unbearably gentle and hurt - not because she hurt him, but because he hurt for her - that for a moment she felt it all rise up, like she was going to vomit everything out at once: her stomach, her feelings, the very last dredges of her diminished powers. 

Then as fast as it came, it all drained away, leaving a bone aching weariness that she hadn't felt since she'd closed the Gate, or ripped apart the Demogorgon. Mike must have sensed the change in the room's energy, because he immediately shifted, gently nudging her over so he could join her on the stretcher. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and she leaned against him, and without another word, closed her eyes against the world.

***

_II. Mike_

Mike and Nancy went with them back to the cabin to salvage what they could. She had a new set of crutches, courtesy of the winter Dustin broke his ankle, but she still preferred leaning on Mike, which must have been fine by him because he clutched at her like he'd never let her go.

So much of that night was a blur to her that taking in the destruction of the cabin in stark daylight was a new punch to the gut. Jonathan and Mike moved furniture, and they all moved carefully around the broken glass and destroyed furniture, giving a wide berth to the bloodstains ( _her blood_ ) on the floor.

It was all too much, and she only lasted about ten minutes before she ended up in the back of the station wagon, head in Mike's lap as he coached her on how to breathe.

"You're okay,” he told her, stroking her hair out of her face, and all she could do was clutch at his knee, nails digging. Mike knew better than to lie by now, but she didn’t think he'd ever been more wrong about anything ever.

It wasn't just the destruction of ( _another_ ) home, it was the fact that they were going to pack everything up and leave the rest behind - for what? Joyce had told her that technically, one of Hopper's sisters would get the property, and El had wanted to explain that there was so much more than a broken cabin. Hopper's army records, and his father's hunting gear, and what was left of Sara were still at the cabin, and what would happen to them?

Her life with Hopper fit into four neat boxes. Nancy and Jonathan carried them out, loading them into the backseat so they didn’t have to disturb Mike and El.

"Did you get her birth certificate?" Mike asked urgently. "Mrs. Byers said -"

"Yes Mike, we found it," Nancy replied. She sounded tired.

But there was so, so much more they couldn't find. They couldn't find the dance she used to do with Hopper on Thursday nights, when she'd spin records while he made dinner. They couldn't pack the nights Hopper had read her to sleep, or tried to soothe her from nightmares. There was no way to pack that miserable week when they'd both gotten the flu and he'd dragged his cot into her room so they could be near each other.

She must have whimpered, or sobbed, because Mike's grip tightened. "I got you El,” he murmured, bent over so his lips were close to her ear. "You can let it out. I'm here."

Her eyes were hot, and she couldn't stop shivering. There was no way to get it all. No way to get Hopper into a box so she could take him with her. No way to capture six blissful months of seeing Mike every day, exploring kissing, reading comics, or dancing in her bedroom.

Dimly, she heard the car doors open and close again. "Hey," Mike's voice was sharp. "Why is my name on that box?"

"That's all the stuff from El's room that you gave to her," Nancy answered. El felt the rumble as the car started. "Some of it is just yours that you've left there."

Mike rubbed her back. "You okay El?"

Her grip on his knee loosened slightly. Maybe she was taking more than she thought.

***

_III. Max_

"Members of our party need assistance, and we are obligated to provide that assistance," Dustin announced gravely.

The ensuing silence was ringing.

She was sitting next to Max on the couch in the Wheeler's basement, and in front of them sat the rest of the Party: Mike and Lucas, anxious and worried; Dustin, too keyed up to sit still, was standing and rocking from foot to foot; Will, hanging back, as if he were joining only reluctantly.

El looked at Max. Her hair was pulled into a fat braid, hanging over one sunburnt shoulder. She smelled like sweat and sunshine. Her face was deeply unimpressed. "What assistance is that?"

The four boys all exchanged a single Look. "Well - it's just. You've both... _lost people_ this summer," Mike said cautiously.

"We know." Max's tone was acidic.

Another shared Look. El remembered Mike laying on this couch just a few short weeks ago, complaining that girls were another species. _Emotion, not logic._

"We just want to make sure..." Lucas trailed off, raising his hands, gesturing, and lowering them again. "You know. That you can talk to us."

"So?" El wanted to tell Max to be nicer to the boys, who were all looking so sad, and were just trying to help - even though El didn't want their help. Not with this. "Because I haven't poured my heart out about my dead brother means there's something wrong with me? You had to throw us an intervention?"

The phrase _dead brother_ made El physically jerk away from Max. Eyes clenched shut, she tried not to remember the way his body had jumped each time the Mind Flayer had hit him.

Mike jumped on that. "You're upsetting El."

" _You're_ upsetting El!" Max accused. "We didn't ask for this! If we want help, we’ll ask for it."

She jumped up and stormed to the basement door, before turning and looking at El. "Are you coming with me?"

El studied each boy's face. She didn't think she could bear to stay in that room with all of them looking at her that way. "Yes."

She was surprised Mike didn't reach for her as she brushed past him. No one called them back as they left. The day was warm, and they followed the power lines behind the Wheeler's to the train tracks, where they kicked rocks while Max unloaded.

"Who do they think they are? That was so stupid. They shouldn't have tricked us that way."

"They just invited us over," El pointed out.

"They just invited us over to _ambush_ us," Max complained. "What do they need to hear me say? Billy was a piece of shit. We all knew it. He almost killed Lucas last year."

She huffed into silence, and suddenly pulled up short and grabbed El by the wrist. "Did - were you - do you need to talk? You know you can talk to me."

"I know," El reassured her, but there was nothing to say. They knew the magnitude of her loss. They knew she was staying with the Byers, and they knew she was going with them. 

Max's eyes were suddenly flooded with tears. El reached up and rested a hand on her cheek.

"It's so stupid!" she screeched. "So fucking stupid. I hated him, and I still hate him, because he wasn't even my real brother, but my mom won't stop crying, and Neil is spending all our money on booze, and they won't even go into his bedroom so all his stupid piece of shit stuff is laying around the house still!"

Max dropped into a crouch, covering her face with her hands. El mirrored her posture, one hand on Max's shoulder, the other on her knee.

"It's not okay,” she finally said. She had learned that generally, when people were upset, you were supposed to assure them that _it was okay_ , that _it would be okay_ , but that wasn't the case now. If it was ever going to be okay again, it wouldn't be for a very long time.

" _It's not okay,_ " Max agreed in a vicious tone. She lifted the hem of her shirt to wipe her snotty nose and looked at El through watery eyes. Taking a few deep, steadying breaths, she shot to her feet again. "Come on, we should head back. Wheeler's going to have an aneurysm if he doesn't make sure you're alive before Jonathan picks you up."

"He's not okay either," El told her, and Max nodded her agreement. 

"I don't think any of us are."

***

_IV. Joyce_

Jonathan and Will were washing dishes while El was still picking at her plate. For someone who loved food, was easily entranced by new flavors, she hadn’t had much of an appetite lately. She hadn't even realized that the two boys had gotten up and walked off, she'd been so distracted. It was Joyce who brought her out of her reverie, standing and dragging her chair close enough to El to rest a hand on her elbow.

"El, honey." It was like coming up out of the bath, the slow emergence into consciousness.

She looked up at Joyce and blinked before pushing her plate away. “Not hungry.”

Joyce looked concerned - El knew that look too well, the pulled eyebrows and pursed lips - for only a moment before her faced morphed back into something more friendly. “That’s okay sweetheart. Maybe we can find something else you’re hungry for later. Right now, I want to talk to you about something.”

El started down at flowery tablecloth that covered the dining room table. It was decorated with little orange and pink daisies. People wanted to talk to her about a lot of things lately. “Okay.”

“You know you - you’re staying with us. And we’ve been making plans for you to keep staying with us but -” Joyce swallowed and considered her words. “But I just want to make sure that this is what you want. I know what Hop - your dad - would want is for you to be safe, and I think he would like for you to be with us in Illinois, but - but if you tell me you can’t bear this, and you absolutely cannot leave Hawkins, we’ll - we can try to make arrangements.”

If she couldn’t stand to leave Mike, Joyce was really saying. El felt that yawning cavern open in her chest, the same as every time the subject came up. No, she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Mike. The thought of leaving him so close to losing Hopper was almost inconceivable - except it wasn’t, because even though some days it felt like Mike was the only thing holding her together, she couldn’t stay in Hawkins.

She was quiet for too long, because Joyce started speaking again. “I just - I don’t want to move forward without at least trying to give you a choice. You haven’t had very many chances to make decisions for yourself your whole life, even when you lived with Hop. I love you, and I love having you, and I don’t want you to think I don’t want you, but -”

“Not safe,” El said flatly. She still hadn’t looked up at Joyce - didn’t think she could stand to see that same awful, gentle expression that everyone looked at her with lately. 

“It’s not that Hawkins can’t be safe,” Joyce objected. “But you’ll be safer with us in -”

“Not safe,” El interrupted. What she wanted to say was: _every bad thing that has happened to your family has been because of me_. They weren’t going to be safe in Illinois if they took her, but they also wouldn’t be safe in Hawkins if she stayed. 

She was never going to be safe, not really, and neither would anybody else who wanted to be close to her.

And Hopper would have wanted her to go.

“I’ll go.” She could only stand to make the briefest of eye contact with Joyce before she looked down again. “Can I go?”

Hopper, once upon a time, had coached her to ask the full question: _may I please be excused?_ El was too tired to find all the words.

“Yes, yes of course honey.” Joyce sounded relieved. El stood. “Will you come find me if you’re hungry?”

“Yes,” El replied, even though she wouldn’t, and they both knew it.

***

_V. Steve and Dustin_

Even though Dustin had always made a big deal about calling _shotgun_ \- a term El didn’t understand then and still didn’t now, because she could not fathom what the front passenger seat of a car had to do with a gun - this time, he sat in the back with El.

She didn’t know why, when she was slumped against the car door, staring out the window, and not talking.

They were supposed to be taking El to the Wheeler’s to meet Mike and the rest of the Party for a sleepover, but they were taking what Steve had called the scenic route. If they were surprised when she didn’t protest or ask why, they didn’t show it.

“Hey, El?” Dustin asked, and she dragged her eyes away from the window to look at him. 

“Yes?” His right shoe was untied, and one of the laces was missing it’s aglet. For how far behind she was in English, she knew that word from doing a crossword puzzle with Hopper from the Sunday paper. It was such a random, little word to get stuck in her head, but it was there on the tip of her tongue every time she laced up her tennis shoes.

“You know my dad died too, right?” Dustin asked, and the frankness of the question actually took her breath away. She couldn’t help the wounded noise that came out of her mouth, a soft exclamation as she covered her mouth with both hands.

“Shit.” Dustin unbuckled his seatbelt to scoot closer to El, putting a cautious arm around one shoulder.

“You are fucking this up,” Steve said flatly from the front seat. “And what did I say about seat belts?”

“Shut _up_ Steve! Now is not the time!” Dustin shot back before turning his attention back to El. “Hey, hey I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say it like that.”

She clutched at his hand. Her hands were trembling. She felt hot and her throat hurt like she was crying, except there were no tears on her cheeks. Maybe she had none left.

“You’ve wasted enough time,” Steve pointed out. “We only have about five minutes before Mike starts paging you.”

“He knows what we’re doing!” Dustin snapped. “And this is a sensitive subject! Besides, I’m not sure Mike will go through, I forgot my backpack with my batteries -”

“You ass.” Steve fished into the console between the front seats and tossed something into the back. Dustin yelped.

“Thanks, but seriously, now is not the time, I’m in the middle of something!” Dustin tossed aside the package of AA batteries and turned his attention back to El. “Look, I just wanted you to know, I know how much this sucks. I know how much it hurts, because I’ve been through it. And I know you usually talk to Mike, and he’s really worried with everything that’s been going on, so I just thought maybe you needed to talk to someone -”

“Who hurts,” El finished for him. Dustin gave her a toothy grin.

“Yeah, who hurts. Because I know how much it hurts, and I know how much it still hurts, even now.” Dustin shrugged, and his voice sounded much more distant, and pained, than it had sounded just moments ago. “Lots of people will tell you that it’ll get better and you’ll feel better, but I know. It’s not true. Or it’s not true the way people think.”

He rubbed her back and fell silent, giving her a chance to speak if she wanted. For the first time in weeks, El almost felt moved enough to say something.

 _Almost_.

“Thanks,” she squeezed out around the lump in her throat. The temptation was there, right there, to let it all loose, unload it all on Dustin who had already shouldered a similar burden and was offering to help carry hers. 

Once she did that, however, there was no going back. Her leg had healed, but the wound in her heart was still black and infected, and her presence in her friends' lives had poisoned them enough. Her hurt was safer deep in her chest.

Dustin grimaced, but did not stop rubbing her back. “That’s an open offer. Anytime El, okay?”

Right then, there was a loud noise from the front seat as the Supercomm buzzed to life from the front seat. “Dustin, do you copy? What’s your ETA?”

“Told you,” Steve grumbled.

***

_VI. Will_

Despite Dr. Owens prescription of rest, her powers were still frustratingly gone - nothing more than a whisper in the back of her mind. She could feel the hollow in her soul where they are supposed to reside, and the feeling of being powerless and weak magnified the sense of loss she felt far away from Hawkins, and Mike, and the Party, and what was left of Hopper and everything she once thought would make up the life she wanted and had foolishly thought she was going to get.

Even worse, her lack of powers meant she couldn’t visit Mike in the Void. Even in her darkest days cooped up in the cabin, fighting against Hopper and the concept of _soon_ , she’d always been able to drop into the Void and check for herself how Mike was okay. Now, she had to rely on long distance phone calls and Cerebro - which was harder and harder to visit as the fall gave way to the cold rains that precipitated winter. Dustin and Mike and Lucas were discussing where they could set it up through the winter - Mike had volunteered the Wheeler’s back yard - but it was still uncertain what sort of range they would get if they moved the tower.

Cruelest of all were the dreams of the Void - the leap of hope and joy she experienced when she realized where she was, tried to call for Mike - and then woke up instead. The first time it had happened she had wailed so loudly she thought Mike had somehow heard it back in Hawkins. 

Now, she could stop herself from waking up the entire household, but she couldn’t stop the choking, gasping tears that inevitably came when she woke up. She could handle nightmares. She was an old pro at nightmares - her entire life sometimes felt like one long nightmare - but this was something else. This was false hope, the idea that maybe she could claw back towards some sense of normality, only to wake up and realize that she was still in a tailspin, and would be for some time.

They’d been in the new house a month when she woke from one of these dreams, smothering her face in her pillow as she tried to stifle the sobs. Despite her best efforts, Will still heard her, and it wasn’t a long wait until her door creaked open. He tossed his pillow on the ground next to her bed and flopped belly first onto the floor, blanket pulled around his shoulders like a cape.

She didn’t stir. “School night.”

Will had started high school - at a disadvantage, even only a month into the school year - but El hadn’t been able to test into the class. Joyce and Jonathan were homeschooling her in the meantime, which El could concede was for the best. El had loved learning, had soaked in everything that Hopper had tried to teach her, devoured all of the library books and worksheets that he had given her, but now it just felt like another hurdle. 

Words were muddled in her head again, and she was forgetting all of the metaphors and idioms that she had slowly started to pick up and understand even if they weren’t working their way into her own speech. Hopper had always insisted that she speak full sentences whenever it was appropriate, but Joyce couldn’t seem to do the same - and it now felt unimportant to El.

Will snorted softly. “I wasn’t sleeping anyway.”

Finally she rolled onto her back. “You should sleep.”

“And you should talk to Mike.”

It wasn’t quite a rebuke, but the scolding tone was there, and El felt guilty. “Did he call you?”

“No, El.” Will’s tone was gentle, but undeniably scolding. “He called _you_ , but you’re avoiding him, so he had to talk to me. And all he really wanted to know was why he couldn’t talk to you.”

“Sorry,” she whispered, dropping an arm over the side of the bed and touching his shoulder. He was warm, and it made her realize how cold she was in the chilly October night.

“Don’t apologize. Just call him. He’s freaking out, he thinks you dumped his ass again.” Will snickered before he sobered again. ”I know that’s not true, but I don’t know what’s really going on.” 

She rolled onto her belly and propped her chin on one hand, looking down at him. The room was dark, but she could still make out Will’s features. The shadows on his face made him look so young again, like the lost boy she had found in the Void.

“Can you tell me what’s really going on?” he finally prompted when she stayed silent and staring.

“Mike’s sad,” she finally mumbled, the very tip of the iceberg that made up her heart. “I don’t want him to be sad.”

“He’s sad because he misses you and he wants to talk to you,” Will pointed out.

“I make him sad,” El agreed. “I don’t want to make him sad anymore.”

“You can’t have it both ways,” Will said firmly. “Either he’s sad for you or sad because of you. And he loves you so I can promise you he’d rather talk to you even if you’re telling him how much everything sucks.”

There was so much more to it than that - it wasn’t just the fact that she missed him, or that she was unhappy in Illinois, or that her grief for Hopper still felt like a raw, gaping hole in her chest ( _remember the hurt_ , he’d told her, but she didn’t think she could forget it even if she wanted). It wasn’t her missing powers, or how completely and utterly untethered she felt from real life.

It was the fact that there didn’t seem to be any end in sight. It wasn’t like when she was cooped up with Hopper in the cabin. Then, at least she’d had the promise of _soon_. Now she had nothing but the nagging sensation that this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be, and yet somehow it _was_ \- and even if she could talk about it, that didn’t change the fact that it was too hard to find the words, and why bother? What would the words change, except to hurt more people? People she loved?

“Everything sucks,” El repeated.

Will groped for her hand in the dark, finding and squeezing. “I hear that.”

***

_VII. Mike (again)_

In hindsight, the reason Thanksgiving went as well as it did was because Mike came to the Byers’ home and they still had the promise of Christmas afterwards.

Christmas, in turn, was an unmitigated disaster, as El returned to Hawkins for the first time since they had moved and discovered a whole new trigger: the town itself, and the immediate and overwhelming sense of dread that had settled over her as soon as they had pulled in and the Party had reunited.

Mike had done up the blanket fort just for her, and despite the fact that Karen had sent Mike up to his bedroom, that didn’t stop him from sneaking down in the middle of the night and kicking Will off the couch and sending him up to Mike’s room in his place.

When he flipped back the sheet to the blanket fort, he looked unsurprised to find El wide awake, unable to stop the tears leaking out of her eyes. 

“I knew it.” He breathed, scrambling into the fort with her and dropping the sheet behind him. “I knew you were acting funny tonight.”

If he wasn’t surprised to find her awake, he was visibly unnerved when she didn’t immediately reach for him in the way that had become purely instinctual up until now. She’d never felt safer than when Mike was holding her - but now she wasn’t sure how safe he was with his arms around her.

“I’m sorry this is hard for you,” he said softly, resting his hands on his knees. “The first Christmas without - without your dad.”

It was, but that wasn’t all of it. She knew if she lost it then - if she finally let it all out - she’d fall apart, and he wouldn’t be able to put her back together. That was too much to ask of him. She had already asked too much of Mike, and not given him anything back but danger and pain.

Despite this, the tears started anew. She could feel them running down her cheeks. Mike’s hands clenched, and when she bowed over, face buried in her hands, he couldn’t hold back anymore. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her against his chest, knocking his head against the bottom of the table.

She wanted to push him away, but she wasn’t strong enough.

“Tell me,” Mike begged, voice muffled against the top of her head. “Tell me how to help. Tell me what you need. I’ll do it, I’ll do anything, just tell me what it is.”

She wasn’t strong enough.

***

_VIII. Jonathan_

When Jonathan came home from work, she was sitting on the couch, in the dark. When he snapped on the lamp passing through the living room, he jumped when he noticed her.

“God, El, you almost gave me a heart attack.” He pressed his hand to his chest, patting it as if to check his heart was still beating. Hopper used to do that as he got used to living with her powers, when she could startle him by slamming doors and cabinets behind him and making him jump.

Now she was still struggling to get used to living without Hopper or her powers.

“Sorry,” she murmured, pulling her knees in tighter against her chest and hoping he’d move along towards his basement bedroom.

To her consternation, however, he sat down next to her on the couch. “Why aren’t you in bed?”

She shrugged. The dreams of the Void were still there, and lately, a newly added torment: the soft, echoing gasp of her name, right before she woke up. It was bad enough lately that she actively avoided sleeping, even as Joyce fretted over her pale skin and the dark bags under her eyes. 

“I guess it would be hard sometimes,” Jonathan conceded, leaning forward and bracing his elbows on his knees, “Considering some of the things you’ve seen.”

She had nothing to say in reply, and so she stayed silent, nails digging into her palms.

“Hey, look, since it’s just you and me -” Jonahan leaned back as if he were trying to appear casual. “I want to ask you something. And since it’s just you and me, you don’t have to worry about Mom freaking out about whatever you say or Will running off and telling the rest of your Party, right? It’s just between you and me. Did Mike teach you about pinky swears?”

He held out his hand, pinky finger extended. El eyed it, but Jonathan didn’t waver, and finally she reached and hooked her finger around his. “Max.”

“Okay, good. Then you know how important that promise is, right?” His voice was gentle and earnest.

“Yes,” she agreed solemnly.

“So.” Jonathan drummed his fingers against his thigh. “I noticed, and I wanted to ask - how come you haven’t unpacked your boxes yet?”

That hadn’t been the question she was expecting. She was expecting yet another in the litany of questions about how she felt, how she was doing, or coping, or why she was so quiet all the time. It was a question that she actually knew the answer to as well: “How long?”

“How long what?” Jonathan prompted.

“How long will we stay? How long will it last?” She had only had two homes in her free life. Mike’s basement had lasted one week, while the cabin had served her for a year and a half.

Why would this home with the Byers be any different?

Jonathan was quiet, thinking about his reply before he spoke. "I understand," he conceded, and quickly added, "It's okay, you know, you can do whatever you want with your room. It's your space, and if you need this to feel comfortable, that's okay. But if there's something I can help with - if you want me to hang posters or pictures or - or help you paint. I bet Will would be happy to paint a mural on one of your walls, if you knew what you wanted."

She thought about it and shrugged.

"At the very least, you could unpack the Mike box," Jonathan suggested. "It might make you feel better to see his stuff. Look at his picture."

She didn't want to unpack that box. If she opened that box, that meant looking at what was left of the cabin, coming face to face with what she'd lost.

Question answered, she waited for Jonathan to leave her, or try to shoo her to bed, but instead, he started talking again.

"You know, after my dad left - he - it was different. It was bad when he was home, because him and Mom fought all the time, and he drank too much, and he was so angry and unhappy that he made the whole house angry and unhappy, you know?"

El turned her eyes to him, but he wasn't looking at her anymore. He was looking down at his hands, clasped loosely in his lap. There was far away look in his eyes that she instantly recognized. Hopper'd had the same look when he'd talked about Sara, and Dustin when he talked about his dad, and Will when he talked about the Demogorgon. 

_Black hole stuff._

"It was already hard at school because everyone knew about what had happened with my mom and dad, and I was really unhappy and angry too, and when the other kids stopped talking to me or avoided me, I just let it happen. I thought it was better. I thought anyone who was around me was going to be angry and unhappy like I was too, because my dad made me that way, and I thought I'd just do the same thing."

His leg started to jiggle, and the gesture reminded her of Mike and his loosely contained energy. He was always fidgeting the same way.

"I can only guess how you're feeling," Jonathan said carefully. "But if it's anything like I felt, I don't want you to be scared to tell other people how you feel or what you need. Nancy had to show me that I wouldn't hurt her."

"I already hurt," El croaked. "I hurt all of them. I hurt you. I hurt your mom. I hurt Will."

"It doesn't work like that," Jonathan said firmly. "We don't keep people who hurt us around. That's why my dad is gone. You know what that means right?"

She could barely breathe. Cautiously, she lifted her eyes and found Jonathan looking at her keenly. He reached out halfway, palm up in an invitation. El stared at it.

"It means that the people around you are getting as much from you as you think you're taking from them El,” he said firmly. "And I know that's really hard to believe, but you just... have to. Nancy helped show me that."

Hearing Jonathan say the secret fear she had been nurturing since July shocked it out of her. The tears came, and she couldn't help it. She launched herself at Jonathan, knocking his hand out of the way so she could wrap her arms around his shoulders.

"I hate it,” she sobbed, unable to stop the words even if she wanted to. "I miss Mike and I miss Hopper and I miss _home_." It had been months since she'd used her words properly, and it was hard to find the right ones. "I miss power, I miss the Void, and I want to look for them."

Jonathan clutched her back, holding her tightly against him. He had always been kind, gentle, and understanding with her, but he had never been this, and suddenly she understood Will's complete, total, unwavering trust in him.

She lost herself completely, letting all of the infection out of her heart even though it felt like the black hole could swallow them both up. Jonathan did not falter - only sounded relieved as he reassured her that it would be okay, and she could cry, and no one would leave her, and they wanted her in their house, and her friends loved her and needed her - all the things that she had known underneath all of the poison and pain in her heart.

When she finally came back to herself, arms trembling from her grip on Jonathan's shirt, heart lighter, they were sitting in the darkness.

"El! El, look!" Jonathan's voice was urgent. 

"Wha -?" She looked around, disoriented. Jonathan had to spell it out for her.

"You blew the lightbulb."


End file.
